Anusha Chari recognized for Scholarship on the Global Economy

Anusha Chari, Professor of Economics, is a scholar of the international economy, with specific focus on international capital markets. She recently received two acknowledgements of her leadership in the economics profession.

Last fall she was selected as a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in the International Finance and Macroeconomics (IFM) program. The members of the IFM program include the leading researchers in international macroeconomics, and entry in the panel is by election of current members. The positive vote is certainly recognition of Anusha’s accomplishments.

In January of this year she participated in an invited panel on the global infrastructure challenge at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting. Also on the panel: Paul Romer (Chief Economist at the World Bank), Larry Summers (former Treasury secretary), and Peter Blair Henry (former Dean of the NYU Stern Business School and Carolina grad). Her message was a challenging one: “Almost a decade after the global financial crisis, the growth rate of global output remains below its pre-crisis trend. Investment in infrastructure could stimulate growth by raising productivity, the expected future growth rate of potential output, and prospective returns on a variety of capital investments. While the infrastructure investment gap in the United States has received the most attention, the greatest gap (and hence opportunity for efficiency gains) lies in the developing countries of the world, where 1.7 million workers will join the labor force each month from now until 2030.”

Of these four speakers, two have a strong UNC connection. Anusha, of course, and Peter Blair Henry as well: he is a Carolina Economics major who graduated in 1991. There we have it – evidence that the key to the global economy is found in Gardner Hall.